Talk It Up!

Lazy Men Looking for Easier Ways to Do Things

A while back, I wrote a post on Google Reader as a casualty of Twitter. Since tools like Twitter and FriendFeed provide instant access to the activities, thoughts, blog postings and insights of your 1,000 closest friends, reading blogs posts the old-fashioned way was starting to feel a bit clunky.

"Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."

                           --Robert A. Heinlein

Recently, my buddy Mitch Joel commented on this phenomenon--that some bloggers were abandoning their blogs for Twitter, with its 140-character limit and short-attention-span theater. He insists that blogs aren't dead:

I think the people saying "Blogging is dead" are those who are not passionate writers by nature, and are simply focused on the next shiny object.

(Ooooh! Twitter shiny! Wait; I need to Twitter this... where was I?)

My most esteemed colleague Mitch has a point. Those who are not particularly passionate about writing might find Twitter an easier and more comfortable means of communication than researching and writing out a coherent blog article. Those of us who love to communicate and who are simply average writers (or maybe even a little bit lazy writes) love Twitter. Or Facebook. Or podcasting. Or Skyping. Or text chat, SMS, webinar participation, even down-home meat-space coffee. For some of us, writing out our thoughts isn't always a easily-flowing daily activity.

Me, I have a passion for communicating. I love live, real-time communication above all else. I've spent the last 10 years giving live presentations for my clients, not knowing when the tech would fail or what questions would be asked afterwards. Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of the spoken word than of the written word; I was podcasting long before I was blogging, and I still feel my best work is in Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter rather than here at Talk It Up. I have a passion for communicating, and to me, writing is the painful process you have to go through to get to a really great presentation, conversation or podcast.

So I think Mitch is onto something here. And I think that the people constantly creating new social media tools are onto it, too. I think they know some of us are just plain lazy and are out there innovating because they know we have the passion; we just also sometimes want the shortcuts.

I wonder if Jack Dorsey got the idea for Twitter by watching too many of his blogging buddies saying, "You know, I have some ideas, but I just don't feel like sitting down and writing out a blog post." I wonder if Adam Curry sat on his couch, saying, "You know, I bet a lot of people could have really great radio shows if they didn't have to find a producer, studio and marketing support." I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg was hanging out in Harvard yard, saying, "You know, I bet my friends could have a much better social life if they could stay in touch online at any hour of the day or night."

And there is a huge amount of value in these new tools targeted at us lazy slackers who are looking for an easier way to write, blog and communicate. If we all had the patience and drive to blog prolifically, would my favorite obsession, Twitter, ever have been created? If we all were masters of our calendars, interpersonal communication skills and time management, would there have been a need for Facebook?

Hi, I'm Heidi Miller. I'm a lazy blogger. And a Twitter and podcasting addict. Those are easier for me. What is easier for you? What innovation would your lazy butt like to see created to make your life easier?

Mr. Fail Whale

Ah, the Fail Whale of Twitter. This will be the day whales fly.

Twitter for Customer Service

Can Twitter be used for effective customer service? Social media is the democratization of the internet, providing outspoken customers with public voices they didn't have before. Now if a customer has a remarkable service experience, whether positive or negative, she can tell more that two friends; she can tell hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands in a blog post.

Or, now, a Tweet. Twitter gives customers the chance to voice instant responses to ongoing situations, live and unedited. If you're on hold for minutes on end, it's now easy to document the agonizing process on Twitter instead of summarizing the next day in a blog post. If a repair guy doesn't show up, customers can document the fact instantly and share it with hundreds of followers. Customer service departments, take notice. Some may be cringing at the idea. But others have taken this new media as an opportunity.

Frank Eliason from Comcast Customer Outreach has taken on the daunting task of responding to Comcast customers' Tweets. J. W. Crump did a detailed analysis of the types of Tweets that Frank was responding to. Not surprisingly, nearly 63% of the Tweets with keyword "Comcast" were negative. More interesting to me were the topics of the Tweets as Crump broke them down. He categorized 59.3% of them as comments on "the company," that is to say, general groaning with no specific complaints. And then, there were the categories a customer service rep could actually do something about: the service not working, the service being slow, the prices being too high. These specific complaints are outstanding opportunities for customer outreach.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: most customers don't want anything unreasonable. They simply want their issues addressed by a real person (who doesn't sound bored to death because of being paid $7.75 an hour) without having to wait on hold for more than five minutes. Kudos to Comcast for taking a stab at that. Frank may not be able to cut down on Comcast's hold times, but he is in fact a real person actively reaching out to customers and treating them like human beings. Even if ComcastCares can't solve every problem right away, wouldn't you be more inclined to Twitter Frank, a real person with a name and who doesn't sound like he's going to commit suicide if he takes one more disgruntled customer service call, than that 1-800 number where you know the rep won't be able to help you?

Corporations take note. Consider Twitter outreach if your customer service department is getting less than satisfactory reviews. Consider being human and reaching out instead of sitting quietly in the call center, sipping Mountain Dew and hating your job.

And to follow up the last Twitter post

A Twitter cartoon. What, Twittering life doesn't count as a good deed?

Twitter in two minutes

The geniuses at Common Craft have done it again--they explain Twitter in a quick, fun two-minute video, answering not only "what is Twitter?" but also "why would I care?"